Social wayfinding in complex environments

Iva Barisic, ETH Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland

Tyler Thrash, ETH Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland

Victor R. Schinazi, ETH Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland

Christoph Hoelscher, ETH Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland

Abstract

Wayfinders in a group can be influenced by various factors,
including other group members and environmental structure, but social wayfinding
is an underexplored topic. This experiment investigated differences in wayfinding
decisions between individuals and groups and their dependence on environmental
structure. Participants navigated through a train station with or without market
stalls, either as individuals or as groups. There was a significant main effect
of environmental structure on task efficiency, and an inconclusive interaction
between environmental structure and group membership on task efficiency (p=0.05).
Because of heterogeneity of variance, we conducted targeted t-tests. T-tests
revealed that groups were slower than individuals with market stalls (p=0.02) but
not without (p=0.91). There was significant main effect of the environmental
structure on number of turns. The main effect of group membership on number of
turns and the interaction were not significant. We will analyze walked and
Levenstein distance as wayfinding efficiency indicators.